The Life and Times of Charles Dickens

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

• Born in 1812 to a lower-middle-class family who moved around a lot

• At age 10, the Dickens family moved to London due to financial troubles where his father was later imprisoned for debts unpaid

• Charles was forced to work in a shoe factory to earn money for his family

• Stark contrast between his happy school life and the “living grave” he worked in as a child

• Forced to leave school due to lack of funding• These experiences heavily influenced his life and writings

Overnight Success• Wrote for Pickwick Papers from 1836-1837• Most popular author of his time• Novels:

• Oliver Twist: comic characters, gruesome villains, rambling narrators

• Hard Times: written during his middle and late periods/ darker visions of Victorian society and bring social problems to light

• David Copperfield and Great Expectations: Two masterpieces/somewhat autobiographical

• Barnaby Rudge and A Tale of Two Cities: historical novels

Personal Struggles• Catherine Thomson, the eldest

daughter of 10 children was a journalist where Dickens was a young journalist

• They became engaged in 1835 and were married on 2 April 1836

• Catherine's sister Mary entered Dickens's household to offer support to her newly married sister and brother-in-law

• Dickens became very attached to Mary, and she died in his arms after a brief illness in 1837. She became a character in many of his books

Personal Struggles Continued• Dickens found Catherine an increasingly

incompetent mother and housekeeper over the years and blamed her for the birth of their 10 children, which caused him financial worries.

• They separated in May 1858, after Catherine accidentally received a bracelet meant for another woman –it was rumored that Dickens had many affairs with other women, which he strongly denied.

• Now alone, he focused on improving education, acting in plays, and traveling on reading tours that brought him wealth

• This hectic pace wore him out. He returned home to rest and died in 1870 while working on his final, unfinished novel.

Background for A Tale of Two Cities

• Takes place between 1775-1793 in London, Paris, rural France and Dover (English port city) but some scenes occur prior through flashbacks

• Rich in descriptions, panoramic sweep of history, suspense, mystery, and terror

• Time period was currently the best for England’s wealthy but behind this scene, the nation’s poor were suffering from hunger, disease, and poverty

• Dickens believed the fate of England would mirror that of France during the French Revolution (more information given at a later date)

Major Themes • Theme: Progress of Destiny

• Characters are symbolic representations of ideas rather than real-life individuals

• Themes of the novel: New Beginnings• Lives of people are interrupted

or wasted then reawakened with new purpose

• Mistakes of the past and evil it causes can turn into triumphs through suffering and virtuous actions